Thursday, April 30, 2015

The Baltimore riot has done what riots usually do. Besides the wonton destruction and the never ending cycle of lack of jobs and lack of employment due to no one wanting to build a business in these neighborhoods, real change usually occurs afterward because words, like this blog, do nothing to change mindsets on a national level. Cause a major riot however, and the whole world is suddenly looking at what caused it. This has led to massive changes in the past, most recently in Ferguson which exposed a racist culture within the police department and ousted many of the town leaders. There is every reason to believe that things may improve because of this, a fact that wouldn't have happened had peaceful protests been the only avenue. This doesn't mean I am recommending that people riot to get what they want, but Mao wasn't lying when he said political power is dealt through the barrel of a gun.
Change is hard, and both the police and black society have to change or else nothing ever will. Police have to stop acting like storm troopers, with a shoot first ask questions later mentality, and black people have to stop acting like children and grow up. You have the power to clean up your neighborhoods. You just have to try, which I will admit some of you are, just not enough. We have to end the war on drugs, pay people livable wages and create jobs even if they are unnecessary because everyone needs work. FDR got us out of the Depression by doing just that, almost literally paying one group to bury bottles and another to dig them up. We can't have 50% unemployment rates in inner cities and not expect trouble. We can't pay the other 50% pennies on the dollar to work and expect everything to work out. It won't, it hasn't, and it cannot continue.
All of this is happening as the Baltimore Police have come up with a rather novel idea of what happened to Freddie Gray, a story I totally do NOT believe. According to the cops and an unnamed "witness," Gray was banging around in his van cell trying to injure himself. Right. Nevermind the fact that this department has injured people before in a way that mimic Gray's injuries. Nevermind that the reported injuries don't match that scenario. Nevermind the fact that it took them weeks to come up with this bon mot, rather than right away, which would have been the truth, not this obvious lie. Nevermind the fact that this unnamed prisoner could not have seen what was going on in the next cell, the police statements taken before contradict this scenario as according to them, they found Gray unresponsive before putting the second prisoner in. So how could he have heard anything? I trust the police as much as I trust Obama crowing about the TPP and how great it will be. Got a bridge to sell me too?

On top of all of this, the mayor is getting heat from people who wonder why she allowed riots to happen in the first place. She has backtracked from her "thug" comment, saying hilariously that there are no thugs in Baltimore. Her own police department is staffed with thugs making that statement somewhat ironic. Many in the black community have said the word thug is the new word for nigger, which is asinine as the word is derived from India and the Thuggie cult, has no racial connotation, and is perfectly accurate in describing looters of any race. Some have suggested her stepping down but I see that as unlikely even if she did fumble the ball here.
Much more likely to see some fallout from this is former mayor and Presidential hopeful Martin O'Malley, whose tenure resulted in these out of control cops by escalating the unwinnable war on drugs. During his time, the cops arrested 100,000 out of a population of 650,000 and while crime did indeed drop, it also made unemployable a huge number of black men whose only avenue was more crime. How can we expect to fix anything if criminals have no other way to make a living than illegally? O'Malley was not the most popular of mayors and things like this will hurt anyone's chances of striving for a populist campaign.

I would like to give a special shout out to a hero from all of this and that is Toya Graham who knocked her 16 year old son around on camera after she caught him masked with a rock in his hand during the riots. Some have said she went to far, but I disagree. There is a big difference between a beating and a whooping and this kid got a whooping, something more parents should be doing of any race. She may have saved him a prison sentence or worse. That is good parenting and he should be getting her something awesome for Mother's Day.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Everyone has heard about the rioting in Baltimore this past week with several people I know getting more angry at the rioters than the police who helped cause all of this. And while I do not condone the actions of thuggish looters, I certainly understand it. These people, poor beyond words and not very well educated, have watched for decades their area degenerate into chaos, job losses as opportunity disappears and the police who are sworn to protect them are every bit as bad as the street thugs that terrorize them. This kind of existence is untenable and sooner or later will explode in violence, as they have no other avenue to peruse.

The Baltimore police have done a really bad job for decades now and this goes beyond just a racial thing. White people I know in the area say the cops are no better behaved toward them with a mentality that you should only call the cops if no other choice is available. This is unacceptable and if rioting is the only way to get any attention to this horrific crime, then what other choice do they have. JFK said it best when he said "when peaceful protest is impossible, violent revolution becomes inevitable." And at this point, it is becoming inevitable.

The weird thing about Baltimore is that it demonstrates what I have been saying for years: the police may not be so much racist as just giant douchebags intent in shaking down whoever they can. We've all heard how racist the Ferguson and North Charleston Police Force are because white people make up a majority of the force and political range. But in Baltimore that is not true. Half the police are black, the mayor is black and the Police Chief is black. Yet, the mistreatment goes on, proving my point that the fact that black people are being arrested in large numbers may have less to do with race and everything to do with economics. There are more poor black people than just about any other race. Part of this is societal issues like the War on Drugs, police misconduct and Republicans. Part is of it is their own fault due to a cultural collapse that puts an emphasis on stupidity (otherwise known as acting white), a disdain for anything not black and thug worship. This type of racist attitudes will destroy black people if they are not careful.

As I correctly predicted in a pervious post, black drug gangs would team up together to attack the cops, as they are becoming persona non grata, a fact of their own making. If police continue to act like the same thugs they have been arresting, they are going to receive similar treatment from the public. You can only push people so far before they push back.

And how come when the reverse happens, when black cops attack white people, the MSM is dubiously silent. Right now, in Philadelphia is a case going on where that is exactly what happened. Several black members of the Philadelphia police department, all from an elite drug unit (think The Shield), are on trial right now for shaking down young, white college students specifically because of their race. RICO laws are being used after one cop, Jeffery Walker, was caught red handed by the FBI stealing drug proceeds from a bust and is now turning state's evidence. Because of this, 160 convictions have been overturned and millions in lawsuits are going to be paid out. And of course the Sergeant in charge is defending his men, saying they couldn't possibly have done all this without his knowledge which either makes him stupid or compliant. Where is the MSM in any of this? Asleep at the wheel as morons like Wolf Blitzer keeps commenting on how he's never seen anything like the latest riots, somehow forgetting the Ferguson riots just a few weeks back. This is why CNN sucks.

The mayor of Baltimore has come under fire after saying she allowed some rioting to occur which seems somewhat stupid. Peaceful protest are fine but when that fine line is crossed into looting, the police have a duty to step in, not watch people's livelihoods burn to the ground. Some black commentators have compared these riots to the ones after a sporting event or the Keene Pumpkin Festival riot (which has now moved to Laconia after Keene nixed the event) in which spoiled white people riot. There is one glaring difference between the two that no one seems to get and that is this: white people don't loot. In none of the riots I have seen on TV or actually been in (two so far and they are really scary) where white people are the culprit has it ever gone beyond petty destruction. In the black community however, as soon as a riot starts, it becomes a free for all and looting happens every single time. Why is that? Maybe because white people, who can be every bit as poor as black people, do not want to destroy their neighborhoods, which also never happens. White people riot in cities or colleges, never where they shop and live. They like having goods and services. Black people complain to high heaven that there are no supermarkets where they live. Look at Baltimore and see why. What company is going to invest millions into an area that is going to cost them sky high insurance premiums, jeopardize employee safety and everytime something happens the community gets pissed at, the store gets looted. As much as I would like to blame the police for everything, it's not all their fault that life sucks so hard for the ghetto. Sometimes it's their own.
The police are losing control in Baltimore because regardless of race, the force there is seen by almost everyone as a thuggish, out of control, profiteering group. The fact that hundreds have been arrested and assaulted (even killed) over the last few years, almost all black, for questionable reasons, demands answers. Add to that that none of the police accused of wrong doing over the years have ever been reprimanded or prosecuted says lots as well. However, the city has shelled out almost $6 million so far in civil payments, which for an area as poor as this, is coming out services that could help the people in this town. Check out the meme above and question how much you would be willing to take from a police force killing your own without repercussions? I know a lot of white people who would be gunning down cops faster than they could replace them. Why should black people be any different?

Monday, April 27, 2015

Hillary is a disaster of her own making. While none of the latest scandals are really proven scandals, they still have the air of one and her handling of them are making things worse. Email-gate was something even a deranged three year old should have seen being a problem. It's not like she didn't know she was running for President in 2016 and she would be looked over with a fine tooth comb, what idiot sets herself up for a major fall like she has? Of course, her personal emails, which she had complete control over, would be argued about. Of course, her charity work would be examined closely and any impropriety would be blown out of proportion. Yet, she went on as if none of it would be a problem which is a problem in and of itself. How we can elect someone who is SO shortsighted which is not exactly a great thing for a president wanna be to be?

The book about her that came out is indeed a hatchet job by a right wing pundit who has even admitted that he has found no actual illegal activity in any of this. But throw enough mud at the wall and some of it will stick as has happened here. Even if the whole Russian/Ukraine gas deal was a coincidence with a giant donation to the charity by the same countries, and then you conveniently left that off your tax returns, of course it would look bad. What is wrong with you?

The real problem with her is the fact that no one believes anything she has to say. Not the public, not the press, not even her donors. We know this because even though she has pledged to protect the middle class and go after the one percent, much like Obama, once in office all of that will go by the wayside. We can prove this because her top donors are all banks and defense contractors. Below is a list of her top donors.

Who honestly believes that none of these people are going to want something for their money? This is from Politico:

Down on Wall Street they don’t believe it for a minute. While the finance industry does genuinely hate Warren, the big bankers love Clinton, and by and large they badly want her to be president. Many of the rich and powerful in the financial industry—among them, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, Tom Nides, a powerful vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, and the heads of JPMorganChase and Bank of America—consider Clinton a pragmatic problem-solver not prone to populist rhetoric. To them, she’s someone who gets the idea that we all benefit if Wall Street and American business thrive. What about her forays into fiery rhetoric? They dismiss it quickly as political maneuvers. None of them think she really means her populism.

She is going to raise over two billion dollars making her a formidable candidate. If she gets the nomination, chances are near 100% she will be the next president regardless of who the right picks. Wheee.

But all of that is still some time off and more pressing matters are at hand. Economic problem look terrible right now with many major problems emerging throughout the world. China just had the first state sponsored business fail, a real estate firm, Baoding Tianwei Group Co., went belly up as their real estate market continues its downward spiral. They lost over $10 billion yuan when their real estate market started to fail which is no big surprise as they were building whole cities that would never have enough affordable occupants. The Chinese developer Kaisa also missed out on repaying some loans as well as a third unnamed company as well. China's real estate market looks as good as ours did around 2007 and we all know how that turned out.

The real problem is Greece which behind closed doors, everyone is starting to panic on. This is from Investmentwatch.com:

It’s still possible that Greece can remain in the eurozone—though that is no longer the base case for many policy makers. At the very least, most fear the situation is going to get much, worse before it gets any better. No one now expects a deal to unlock Greek bailout funding at this week’s meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Riga—originally set as the final deadline for a deal. The new final, final deadline is now said to be a summit on May 11.

But among European politicians and officials gathered in Washington DC last week for the International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings, there was little optimism that a deal will be agreed by then.

The two sides are no closer to an agreement than when the Greek government took office almost three months ago. “Nothing, literally nothing has been achieved,” says an official. In fact, it is worse than that: so far, the bulk of Athens’s reform plans would actually cost money or reduce government revenues, according to eurozone officials.

They say that when you add up all the government’s proposals, the budget surplus required under the current program turns into a 10-15% deficit while debt soars far above the 120% of GDP targeted for 2022. There is no way that the eurozone—let alone the IMF—could disburse funds on the basis of such fantastical numbers.

The bottom line is that Athens won’t get any money unless it can reach a deal that satisfies the IMF that Greek debt is on a sustainable path and that it has a medium-term funding plan in place. The eurozone won’t disburse its own bailout funds without a deal that carries this IMF seal of approval.

With $27 trillion on the line on the derivative market if the Euro fails, the world economy could go splat sometime next month. To put that in perspective, the entire debt of the US is only $18 trillion and banks have only a fraction of that money to pay off should those bets go south. Banks are seeing this and have started stockpiling silver, with JPMorganChase raising their physical silver holdings from $8 billion to $55 billion over the last six months. The only reason you would do would be to hedge your bets that the dollar was going crash and precious metals would explode. This could all lead to electronic money which would allow the government, and the IRS, to track your every purchase and savings. What would a black market look like with that kind of scrutiny?

May 11th is the day of reckoning when a deal between Greece and the EU has to happen or else unknown things will occur. There is nobody on the planet that can guess what a country defaulting like this will do to the Euro and whether other countries like Spain, Italy and Portugal may follow. We are truly in uncharted waters and by the mid-point of next month, a world wide economic disaster may unfold. Be prepared.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

The police are rapidly becoming the Republicans for this column with their innate ability to repeat week after week, this being the third week in a row being at the top of the heap. This week isn't even due to the case itself where a young black male found himself beaten to death at the hands of the police. It has everything to do with the unbelievable aftermath where they act as if they have all the time in the world to figure out what happened, when the court of public opinion has already made up their minds. Let's see those runner ups.

10)Bruce Jenner- I have no problem with transgender people of any age. If you want to dress like a woman, as long as you up front about it, or even become a woman, Mozel Tov. But there seems more to this story that just that. I seriously wonder that this may be less about being transgender and more about desperately trying to stay in the public's eye. 65 is a little late for coming out about this and with a looming divorce from wife number there, Kris Jenner, you have to question if this wasn't his way of getting another series, which E! just signed him up for. More problematic is his statement that he is also a Republican. WTF? Anyone who is gay or transgender or both AND Republican is truly delusional as this would be the equivalent of a black man joining the KKK. Get a clue guys. The Republicans party, as they are right now, do NOT want you, and voting for them sets your personal cause back decades.

9)C-SPAN- I discovered last night that depending on where you live, C-SPAN is different. In my area, they didn't air the President's speech last night, cutting away to Washington Live instead. In Boston, they ran the whole thing. Why? Even worse, they changed the time on my DVR from a solid four hour block, which would have missed the best part anyway as they cut away at 10, to hour long chunks almost causing me to miss it. Had I been out last night, I would have been pissed. I'll never tape anything off this channel again.

8)Lawyers- A lot of the problems we have today is because lawyers are out of control. Everyone can get sued for anything, no matter how trivial, which can cost upwards of five million dollars in some cases. This week we had some doozies where the parents of Mike Brown, in a desperate money grab, decided to sue the Ferguson Police Department for their kid's death, even though every single entity who looked at this said Brown was at fault, including all the forensic evidence. This is ambulance chasing at it's best and unlikely to succeed. Worse is companies like John Deere and GM suing owners from working on their trucks, claiming that copyrights on the internal software are protected and vehicles are actually more rental than owned. I Hate Lawyers.

7)Popeye's- This week the food chain fired a pregnant worker because she got robbed and then they blamed her for it. Even worse, she claims they demanded she pay back the $400 taken and when she couldn't, they fired her. Popeye's claims she was negligent in not moving the money to the safe, but she countered that it was busy and she just didn't have the time, which is believable. Much like the Baltimore Police, they have a major image problem here regardless as to who was at fault.

6)Carly Fiorina- This Sarah Palin wannabe is going to declare her candidacy using her time as CEO of HP as a resume builder, seemingly unaware she also drove the company into the ground and was voted one of the top twenty worst CEO's in American History. Ouch! Good luck on those credentials. She also has stated that California's drought was brought about by environmentalist who have refused to build new reservoirs and dams, which wouldn't have made any difference as there wouldn't have been enough rain to fill them either. But logic and physics be damned, she is a Republican and facts don't matter to them. What a buffoon.

5)Ben Affleck- I really like Ben and have known several people who have met him who say he is the nicest man. However, he really stepped in it this week when it came out that he tried to get PBS's show about ancestors of famous people to censor the facts one of his ancestors owned slaves. Why, Ben, why? This wouldn't have even a blip on the radar had it come out and now it seems so much worse. Your history is not going to change, don't make mistakes like this. My ancestors fought for the British. I don't hide it and I don't like it but that's that.

4)Scott Walker- His numbers have fallen way down since his big roll out as his latest budget was so bad, even his fellow Republicans wouldn't vote for it. It contained drastic cuts to the poor and elderly, while showering more money on the rich. This was not only class warfare, it was class genocide and all of it was brought to you by the Koch brothers who are going to give a billion dollars to whatever candidate they decide on. Do you honestly think that this person will represent the average guy, or business as usual? It didn't help that Walker gave a speech in which he claimed to stand up for workers pay and rights, while simultaneously destroying them. What a tool and so is anyone who votes for this ass.

3)Chase Bank- These guys just became the first bank to change negative interest rates to depositors who had over $100,000 in their accounts. In other words, they changed people the privilege of holding on to their money. Even odder, when people starting moving their money out, which is logical, they didn't seem to care. This may because a massive economic disaster looms as Greece appears to be at death's door and with it $26 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Chase, over the last six months, have stockpiled silver from $8 billion worth to $55 billion worth. What do they know that the rest of us don't? Silver and gold would be the only measure of wealth of the dollar goes belly up, keeping banks afloat and the rest of us destitute. Fun.

2)FBI- These guys were a hair's breath (pun intended) from being top dig this week. Much like their bullet comparison fiasco a few years back where they found out that FBI testimony on bullet fragments were based on nothing resembling science, a new disaster has unfolded. This time it is hair samples that for over twenty years FBI "experts" testified as to their authenticity, only to be found out that none of it was true, resulting in thousands put behind bars and dozens on death row. Some of those poor bastards may have been executed and innocent and the FBI is to blame. Where are the arrests for these assclowns Obama?

1)Baltimore Police Department- Nothing makes me madder than predictability that is completely ignored. Much like the snowstorms of the south in which two separate cites made the exact same mistakes ten days apart, the Baltimore police seemed completely stunned by violence breaking out on their streets as they dick around with arresting every damn cop involved with the tragic case of Freddie Gray. Unlike South Carolina who has arrested two cops immediately for wrong doing over the last six months, Maryland has decided to go the Ferguson route and drag this out for an eternity. What part of you have 48 hours to decide what to do, do you not get? After that public opinion will think you are stalling, which you are, and riots will start which is what just happened. It also doesn't help when your union boss, who always seems to be the dumbest cop alive, told the crowd to stop acting like a "lynch mob." Ohh, maybe you are unaware but that's kind of racist. His attempt at backtracking it didn't help as he just dug his grave deeper. If this was anyone else, they would have already been in custody and processed. But because they are cops, they get a free vacation, like Robert Bates is enjoying right now as he was unbelievably allowed to leave the country before his possible arrest, which again, is stunning. Why are cops above the law now? Why is South Carolina more progressive than Maryland or Oklahoma? So congratulations Baltimore Police you are indeed douchebag of the week.